| advertisement |
|
|
| advertisement |
|
|
|
| Report: Dresdner Bank financed Auschwitz
|
|
 |
The Desdner Bank in Frankfurt
|
|
|
| Page tools |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
The Dresdner bank was directly responsible for co-financing the establishment of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp and was the bank of choice for Hitler’s SS, according to a new independent report on the German bank’s dealing during the Nazi era.
The report, released on February 17 suggests that the bank’s involvement in the construction of the death camp “went much further than had previously been known”.
When the scandal first came to light last year, Dresdner Bank decided to avoid taking a position until a panel of independent historians reviewed the current issues and competed its research of the its Nazi past.
The Bank began researching the issue in 1997. At that time, compensatory claims by numerous victims’ groups, based in the United States, against the bank and German industry as a whole was at an all time high. It forced the bank and countless other companies into releasing details of their past dealings with the national socialist apparatus.
Early release
Eight years of research through archives based throughout Europe came to an end on February 17, when the historians’ findings were presented to the public. The findings were released earlier than the bank had intended to make them public, in light of the bank’s direct involvement with Auschwitz.
In a press conference, historian Klaus-Deitmar Henke told reporters that “the bank played the role of perpetrator and accomplice”.
The report, “The Dresdner Bank in the Third Reich” shows that the bank was more involved with the Nazi government than any other bank. It was the primary lending institution to the SS.
The bank made loans of over 47 million Reich Marks to the SS. The historians’ evidence suggests that those monies were used for SS commando operations associated with the Nazi killing machinery and that the bank was therefore aware of SS brutality and thus, most probably, of the mass killings managed by the SS.
A subsidiary of the Dresdner Bank financed the Huta Works, the company that constructed the original crematoria and gas chambers for the Auschwitz death camp.
“No other bank was so closely associated with giving a free hand to the businesses that gave the SS’s the necessary tools for the annihilation of Jews in Auschwitz-Birkenau," the report read.
Jewish property taken
The historians also found that the bank took advantage of the arianization [nationalization] process of Jewish property “on a grand scale” and that it earned commissions by having supplied information to Nazi inspectors necessary for locating Jewish wealth.
The 2,376 page report makes clear that the perpetrator role was not he work of individual managers but rather “the entire board…”
In a press release, current board member Wulf Meier said “we must take this information the way it comes. As much as it hurts, we accept these truths.”
The report makes the Dresdner Bank doubly liable for the Nazi atrocities, because its business dealings with the SS was not a result of duress.
The historians said their findings also showed great involvement in similar issues by the German saving and loans institutions who have yet to deal with their past. The historians appealed to the savings and loans institutions to open up their archives to scrutiny.
The findings were presented in Berlin’s Jewish museum – which also added to the scandal. The Central Council of Jews in Germany decided to boycott the presentation of the report.
Critics of the location, including chairman of Berlin’s Jewish Community, Gideon Jaffe suggested that using the location was “in bad taste”.
Museum spokesperson, Eva Soederman stated that the museum is “the right place for the confrontation of such historical matters” and reiterated that museum director, Michael Blumenthal, former American Secretary of the Treasury, invited the bank and other companies to present their findings associated with their historical responsibilities at the museum already in 1995.
Dresdner Bank, which is a sustaining member of the museum, was founded in 1872 by the Jewish financier Eugen Gutman, who ran the bank until 1920.
The report can be ordered by the bank from: Dresdner Bank AG, Jurgen-Ponto-Platz 1, 60301 Frankfurt am Main
|
|
 |
|